Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system comprising an image forming apparatus such as an MFP (Multi-Functional Peripheral) and its relevant technique.
Description of the Background Art
An MFP is provided with an operation panel for receiving various operation inputs. As the operation panel, generally, a panel which has relatively wide viewing angle in consideration of its operability.
When a user inputs characters to such an operation panel, however, there is a possibility that the content which the user of the MFP inputs is peeped by another person who stands next to the user.
Now, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2006-277239 (Patent Document 1) discloses an electronic document browsing technique for browsing an electronic document consisting of a plurality of blocks which have different confidentiality levels by a browsing device (computer or the like). In this technique, after a user authentication process is performed for the electronic document, blocks of low confidentiality level among the plurality of blocks in the electronic document are displayed on a fixed display of the browsing device in a normal state and those of high confidentiality level are displayed on the fixed display in a blank state. Further, a user wears a head mount display (hereinafter, referred to also as “HMD”) and the contents of the blocks of high confidentiality level, which are displayed blank on the fixed display, are displayed at appropriate positions on a screen of the HMD. With this technique, it is possible to prevent a peep of information of high confidentiality level by another user, which is caused by that the information is displayed on the fixed display.
The technique of Patent Document 1 is, however, a technique for preventing an electronic document from being peeped by another user when the electronic document is displayed after the user authentication process (in short, a technique solely on a display of the electronic document). The technique of Patent Document 1 does not relate to an input process (character input process) of user authentication information and the like.
In Patent Document 1, shown is a normal login operation (where the user authentication information is inputted by using a user authentication dialog and a hardware keyboard of the browsing device (computer)). In such a login operation, there is a good possibility that an input operation performed by a user with the hardware keyboard of the browsing device (computer) and an input content may be peeped by another user (user who stands next, or the like). Further, in Patent Document 1, it is not supposed to use a different input method as the method of inputting the user authentication information (login information) and it is therefore difficult to avoid a peep of the input content of user authentication information by another user.
As another technique other than that of Patent Document 1, there is a technique that a panel display image of an image forming apparatus is sent to an external terminal other than the image forming apparatus and the MFP is remotely operated by using an operation screen displayed on the external terminal (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 05-122424 (Patent Document 2)).
Patent Document 2 discloses a technique in which operation screen data itself (bitmap image data or the like) is transmitted from the image forming apparatus to the external terminal to display the operation screen on a display part of the external terminal, and operation position information (press position information or the like) inside the operation screen is sent/received to thereby receive an operation input in the operation screen. This is a remote operation technique utilizing a so-called remote connection.
With such a technique, it is possible for a user to input the user authentication information or the like by using the operation screen displayed on the external terminal, which is other than an operation panel of the image forming apparatus. Therefore, it is possible to suppress a possibility that a character input content which is inputted by a user may be peeped by another user.
In the case, however, where a process of transmitting and receiving image data is performed in addition to a key input process, like in Patent Document 2, there arises a problem that the processing load of the external terminal increases to cause a decrease in the operability, such as a decrease in the rate of reaction to the operation.